


In This New Life

by chaoticrandomness



Series: Wake Up And Remember [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Gen, Implied/Referenced Incest, Name Changes, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5419244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticrandomness/pseuds/chaoticrandomness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a few more nations are reincarnated as people. Or, Belarus, Lithuania, and therapy sessions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In This New Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WanderingThroughWickford](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingThroughWickford/gifts).



_Finally, I'm coming home._

 

I'm sitting on a plane and rereading the letters my siblings wrote me, for I'm finally going to see them for the first time in two years. 

 

_Natalie, I'm getting married. I'll make sure you'll be able to be in the wedding as my maid of honor._

 

_So, Kat's getting married... I want to get married, but the person I love obviously doesn't love me back, no matter what I do... wait, why am I thinking about this!?_

 

I have read her letter at least five times, and I have never felt any twinges of jealousy towards her, not have I met anyone I'd like to spend the rest of my life with. 

 

_I mean, I have it practically memorized by now, that she's marrying a computer programmer and adopted a kid and Issac is still teaching people about Europe and almost died once, and I would kill anyone who hurt the person I-_

 

_What the hell?!_

 

I grab another letter off the stack in my bag, for I have no clue why the hell I would randomly think about my brother in a romantic context. 

 

_Natalie,_

 

_Well, today I got threatened by my future-brother-in-law, who basically said that if I were to hurt Kat or her fiance or her kid, he'd shoot me and have his sister mutilate my corpse with a frying pan._

 

_That certainly wins the award for 'Worst Meeting With Future Sibling Ever'. On another note, he's actually pretty nice, and invited me over to dinner with his husband and kid after I told him some stuff._

 

_They don't know about the General, don't they. They don't know what made him into the sort of person that would be so desperate for companionship, and I will-_

 

I'm not sure if thinking about my brother murdering people or thinking about being in an incestuous relationship with him is more incongruous with my life, but I need to  _stop thinking,_ and sleep is a perfectly good solution to that problem.... 

 

* * *

 

 

_"I want to marry you."_

 

_"Why are you still in love with him?! He left you, and I'm still here!"_

 

_"You'll never be alone, Vanya. Please, let me do this."_

 

_"I am going to marry you even if I have to stick a knife to your neck and drag to you the altar, dearest."_

 

I need to go to therapy. There's a therapist's office in Hearth, and I can talk to the guy there about my random incestuous attraction for my brother and all of these weird dreams that feel both real and fake at the same time.

 

_Besides, it's perfectly normal for people who've been in combat to go see therapists for PTSD, but I don't even know what this is... and honestly, I'd rather have that than random incestuous attraction to my brother..._

 

Thankfully, no one's here to pick me up, and I tell the driver to take me to the therapist, for I can't see either of my siblings without thinking about this mess of memories...

 

 _I will never leave him, for that's what the rest of them all did. And I will make them all pay for abandoning my brother to his crumbling mind._ _They will never understand that everything he does is to keep people near him, and that it is all justified._

 

_"Have you ever thought... maybe, Natalia, have you ever thought about not stalking me?"_

 

"I don't think about stalking you and I am not in love with you!" I scream as I get out of the cab and yank open the door to the building. There's a man sitting on a sofa, and he has brown hair and green eyes, and is really-fragile looking... 

 

_He is rather pretty and I broke his hand once. Or twice. To be fair, he deserved it for abandoning my brother.... didn't he?_

 

"Um.... Natalia? Miss Arlovskaya? I didn't... that's not your name, isn't it?" he rambles as he turns towards me. 

 

"I still respond to that, and I'm here to make an appointment, Toris." I answer, and how do I know his name when I've never met him before in my life? 

 

* * *

 

"Why are you here?" he asks, pulling me out of my confusion. 

 

"I... um, it's a really long story, but I randomly developed an incestuous attraction to my brother a few days ago, and-" I begin, before he interrupts me. 

 

"Were you abused by your brother, Natalia?" he asks. 

 

_No, he's a perfectly nice person and I stalked him and tried to force him into going along with my love for him, so..._

 

"Are you married?" I blurt out, for there's a ring on his finger and I want the answer to be no and I  _don't_ want to talk about the world where I made a habit of stalking my brother out of love to the point of paranoia and terror... 

 

"Yes, I am." he answers, and no, he's wrong, he's divorced and a variant of a stalker and the sort of person who would abandon my brother under times of duress, so clearly I have all right to despise him and let him be abused... 

 

_Wait, where the hell did that come from!? I need help, but he's not going to want to see me if I keep acting like this..._

 

"...I am specifically trained to work with those who've underwent domestic violence or abuse, but I have no one to see today and I think this is an extenuating circumstance, Natalia." he answers, but he's dead right now and corpses don't talk. 

 

* * *

 

_So I was a crazy stalker in love with her brother and prone to violence... in this strange other life, I suppose. And I also hated the man who's currently my therapist, and..._

 

The question is, should this affect who I am at all? Should it even matter that I'm constantly getting bombarded with memories of a woman who is not me and never will be me? 

 

"Could you please describe exactly what you recall?" Toris asks, and he's acting like this is all perfectly normal. 

 

_But to people whose lives are nothing but endless parades of horror, they're completely desensitized to madness, and it's normalcy that they find absurd. But am I talking about him, me, my brother, or all three of us?_

 

"I... stalked my brother a lot and wanted to marry him and told him that I was such a better person than who he loved, because I didn't abandon him and you did." I answer, and I don't even know if he's just playing along with me or actually lived through this strange past life... 

 

"...that's not important, but what you said lines up with what I recall. I just didn't expect to be in your memories." he says as he begins to smile, but it's like he wanted to say something else or cry, for his eyes are filled with fear. 

 

_What do you have to be afraid of? I... okay, I did break your hand, but that was once and you seemed fine about it... which is still an insanely callous way to look at life._

 

"When did you start remembering? How did you deal with it?" I ask, for I did hurt someone, once upon a time, and he just so happens to be the only person I know of that can help me. 

 

"...the first thing I tell a lot of the people who come here is that they're not solely defined by what happened to them, and I've been experiencing these flashbacks for... ever since I met my husband, which would be about five or six years ago. I guess your case is different because you grew up with your siblings, and they wouldn't be familiar strangers to you..." he answers as the office blurs in front of me... 

 

_What am I doing in a bathroom with a bloody corpse, of all things? Is every interaction with my siblings and Toris going to trigger another memory to come up to the surface?_

 

_Kat, Issac.... if you're standing at the airport with your friends and relatives waiting for me, I'm at therapy. Sorry...._

 

* * *

 

 

"Could you please call my siblings for me?" I ask, but there's no reason for him to listen to me, when his body's lying in a bathtub and covered in scar tissue... 

 

_I... I didn't try to kill him in this weird past life! I didn't do any of that, and I know that because I hated him so much for stealing my brother's affections that I'd just pretend that he didn't exist when we lived together... right?!_

 

_I know that this girl will never be me, but I feel like I'm missing something from the story of my past life and that I need to find that piece._

 

"Yes, I will, Miss Arlovskaya. Do you want to meet next week on... Monday?" Toris says as he picks up a phone and a directory, but he's  _dead..._

 

_It's not he'd care about being dead, for he did try to talk to me... which I promptly ignored and went back to planning how to stay in this house with my brother forever._

 

"What did you remember?!" I blurt out, for I have no idea why I keep walking into his corpse in my dreams, and the General is standing over my brother... 

 

"What I remembered was actually my impetus for going into domestic violence counseling, for I kept dreaming of this man who believed that it was his duty to protect others by letting himself be abused by the person who ruled him, and I wanted to help him." he answers, and I am drowning in a sea of realizations. 

 

_So... this is how the cycle of abuse works, isn't it? People who only know trauma perpetrate it perpetually._

 

"I... you were dreaming of yourself, weren't you?" I ask, but he's staring into a space on the wall, like he's seeing the girl I once was instead of who I am. 

 

"All of us... were granted this life as humans in order to be free from the burdens of immortality and nationhood. There is still a part of me that is Lithuania, just like there's a part of you that's still Belarus, Natalia. The difference is that you can be happy and free from the world's horrors, and find your own path in life." he answers. 

 

_...history, as my brother says, is filled with messes and death and oppression. To experience every single horrifying thing on the planet... no wonder all of us were so crazy back then._

 

_But I can deal with what I've learned of the world back then, and rise above all the chaos._

 

"Well, here are the ten people from the airport you wanted, and it's also apparently legal to transport kids under the age of eight in the trunk of your car." someone quips as the door opens, and I'm greeted by nine strangers and two siblings. 

 

"...so, who's the person you've decided was interesting enough to strand us in the airport for an hour for, Natalie?" my brother quips as I rush towards him and Kat, impulsively embracing my siblings, for I haven't seen them in so long... 

 

_He's a married therapist from my past life, but we're getting along a lot better than we were before, okay? And I would never want to be in a romantic relationship with you, so you don't need to worry about that. I_ _don't know if you or Kat started experiencing a bunch of really creepy and disturbing flashbacks to a past life where we were all countries, but he helped me work through them._

 

"It's a very long and strange story that I'll tell you later. And Monday works for me." I answer, as I walk out the office and into the car, for I'm finally going to be home. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this. :)


End file.
